Lethal Arms
by H.J. Bender
Summary: After receiving a threatening letter from Yassen Gregorovich, Alex finds himself living in fear of being stalked; could the assassin really be out to get him? DISCONTINUED.
1. Dead Letter

**CHAPTER ONE: DEAD LETTER**

.**  
**

It started with a letter. _The_ letter. Plain white envelope, handwritten text. Standard-issue postage stamp of the Queen. No return address.

"You have fanmail," Jack chirped cheerfully, handing Alex the letter as she sifted through Thursday morning's aggregation of magazines, bills, and junk.

Alex studied the envelope for a moment, automatically accounting for every suspiciously auspicious detail before taking out his Swiss Army Knife and neatly slicing it open. Inside he found a single leaf of tri-folded white paper, dissected by one thin, ominous paragraph:

**_I told you to stay out of this._**

**_Listen well, or the next stranger you bump into might come away with more than just a button._**

Alex's heart slammed blood through his arteries as his mind began to race. Stay out of what? What stranger? What button? It wasn't until he'd inadvertently crumpled the envelope in his fist that he realized something else was in it. He unfolded the wad of paper and shook out a single gray button. "ADIDAS SPORT" was stamped about its circumference.

Alex frowned. He owned an Adidas wind jacket—blue and dark gray, with the button-detachable hood. It wasn't his favorite and he hardly wore it at all. Well, not counting when MI6 had sent him to Antwerp two weeks ago. He'd been investigating that dodgy Swedish astronomer whose secret government project turned out to be nothing more than a space-themed amusement par—

Every muscle in Alex's body went suddenly rigid as a wave of memory crashed into him.

He'd been chased on foot by two Belgian police officers who had caught him breaking and entering Dr Sørensen's warehouse. Alex had taken to the crowded streets of downtown Antwerp, hoping to lose them. He'd collided with civilians and smashed into street vendors until finally, cornered and with nowhere to run, he'd been forced to jump into the Scheldt River. Ruined everything he'd been wearing that day, including his favorite sneakers. And his Adidas jacket.

Alex stared at the button sitting quietly in his hand, then at the letter.

"Everything okay?" asked Jack, sipping coffee from her karate kittens mug.

"Yeah," said Alex, folding the letter and shoving it in his back pocket. "Just an advert for a university." He shouldered his backpack and started for the front door. "See you this afternoon, Jack."

"Have a good day, hon!"

Alex did not have a good day. He spent the next seven hours trapped in school, trying to pay attention to his teachers and their completely irrelevant lessons, all the while feeling the letter burn in the back of his pocket like a hot piece of metal. He didn't need to look at it again to remember what it said; he had memorized the words the first time he'd seen them.

_I told you to stay out of this. Listen well . . ._

When the school day finally ended, Alex mounted his bike and pedaled furiously down King's Road, almost as if trying to outrace his own thoughts. But no speed was great enough to distance himself from the heart-stopping truth:

Yassen Gregorovich had been in Belgium two weeks before.

And now he knew where Alex lived.

* * *

_Yassen stepped close, close enough for Alex to get a good look at his smooth face and long reddish-blond eyelashes. It took every ounce of his self control to resist the urge to bolt out from under the weight of the assassin's gaze._

_"You don't belong to the same world as me," Yassen murmured evenly. "Go back to school. Go back to your life. And the next time they ask you, say no."_

_Alex swallowed dryly, returning the penetrating stare with all the courage he could muster. "I don't have much of a choice."_

_At that, Yassen's mouth twisted upward into a smirk. "You always have a choice, Alex." And then he turned, walking with smooth, graceful strides back to the waiting helicopter . . ._

The digital clock on the nightstand read 1:40 AM. Alex lay in bed and stared at the shadows on the ceiling, wishing there was a way to shut off his brain. No matter how hard he concentrated on relaxing or how many times he did multiplication tables in his head, nothing could settle his anxious nerves.

He sighed and rolled over, wriggling uncomfortably into his covers.

So he'd managed to bump into Yassen Gregorovich during his escape from Sørensen's warehouse. Alex was quite certain of it. But what business had the Russian had there? Negotiating another contract? Tracking down an unsuspecting target? Enjoying a murder-free holiday? He didn't approve of Alex's continued involvement with MI6, that was made perfectly clear courtesy of Royal Mail. But what did it matter to Yassen? Was he afraid that Alex might actually make a name for himself in the world of espionage and come gunning for vengeance one day? Or was he genuinely thinking of Alex's best interests? If so, he'd set a hell of an example when he shot Ian Rider and left the fourteen-year-old without a family. No, Yassen Gregorovich was a cold-blooded murderer who didn't give a damn about anyone, child or adult. So why the threat? Did he want to keep Alex from harm so that he might one day have the pleasure of finishing him off for himself?

The fear and worry had vanished, and now Alex was simply fascinated. Of course, he hated Gregorovich with every fiber of his being, but even Ian's murder wasn't enough to dampen the irresistible draw to the dangerous, enigmatic assassin. Alex hardly knew the man, which made it difficult to properly hate him—he needed a reason. He had to find out more.

Alex threw off the covers and padded across the carpet of his bedroom, the moonlight washing over his bare chest. He went to his closet and pulled his jeans out of the dirty laundry hamper, rifling through the pockets until he found the note and the button.

Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Maybe he should just tear up the paper and flush it down the toilet with the button and be done with it, pretend he never received it.

But the itch of curiosity was too great to resist. Perhaps there was something more to the message.

Alex sat down at his desk and clicked on the lamp. He took out a notebook and pencil and copied down the words as he saw them. He spent the next twenty minutes rearranging letters, counting them, trying to form a picture, writing them backward, but it was for nothing. Despite its threatening qualities, it seemed to be just an ordinary letter.

At 2:20 Alex sighed in frustration and dropped his pencil. He leaned back in the chair and rubbed his tired, prickly eyes. He was going to look like hell tomorrow morning, he just knew it. He stared down at the letter and the button on his desk, wondering if there was nothing more to them than what he saw now. Working for MI6 was beginning to get to him, he thought. He was looking too deeply into simple things.

He picked up the button from his lost Adidas jacket—probably at the bottom of a rubbish heap by now—and rolled it between his fingers. More an act of restless fidgeting than anything else.

Yassen had been close enough to pull this button right off his jacket. Close enough to have had his hands on him. Alex shivered, thinking of the dangerous situation he had only narrowly avoided. Yassen could have taken him out at that precise moment, but he had probably been shocked to see Alex plowing through Antwerp like a madman. That brief second of surprise may have saved Alex's life.

When Alex finally returned from being lost in his own thoughts, he looked at the button in his hand and dropped it with a startled gasp.

It had turned blood red.

_What the hell?_ Alex leaned over the harmless-looking plastic disk on his desk and watched it slowly fade to its normal color again. Once he was certain it wasn't going to explode or spray poison gas, he picked it up again. Didn't feel any different, seemed perfectly all right. Then a thought occurred to him.

He cupped his hands over the button and blew between his thumbs, feeling the moist heat of his breath sink into his palms. When he opened his hand the button had gone bright red again.

Thermochromism.

The word surfaced in his mind, and he suddenly recalled (with a small amount of pride) a brief chemistry lesson last quarter. The students had been studying states of matter and some of the creative ways in which liquid crystals were used in everyday products, such as battery charge indicators and thermometers. The class had even conducted an experiment using crystalline zinc oxide on pieces of white paper. To an observer's eye the paper appeared to be blank, but when held over a Bunsen burner the zinc oxide turned yellow, making whatever was written on the paper visible.

Alex smiled to himself incredulously. Invisible ink. This button had been coated with it, and the dye had reacted with the heat of his hand, rearranging the molecular structure of the crystals to form this red chroma. Oldest spy trick in the book. And if invisible ink was on the button, then that meant—

Alex snatched the letter from his desk and hugged it, wrapping his arms around himself and pressing it against his chest. He waited a minute or two for his body heat to sink in before pulling the letter away and staring.

**_I told you to stay out of this.  
_**_151 Embrin SW2_**_  
Listen well, or the next stranger you bump into might come away with more than just a button._**

Alex smiled triumphantly.

So much for sleeping.


	2. Danger Zone

**CHAPTER TWO: DANGER ZONE**

.

It was an address located somewhere in Brixton, probably one of the most dangerous parts of Greater London. Drugs, gangs and gun crime seemed to fester there, and Alex began to wonder if he was willing to risk his safety to satisfy his curiosity. Then again, he thought, if he could navigate a pitch-black mining shaft, jump out of an airplane, and ride an ironing board down a snowy mountain while being shot at with machine guns, he could handle himself in a situation where people weren't actively trying to snuff him. Besides, it wasn't as if he were going to Brixton at night. The tube was a better suited mode of transportation than his bike, so he could nip down there after school, have a look around, and be back before dinner. No problem.

The school day didn't pass fast enough. As soon as the last bell rang Alex was off and running to Sloane Square Station, where he hopped aboard the Victoria line south. He was giddy with anxiety and excitement, his heart pounding and his mind keenly alert, his eyes watching for anything out of the ordinary. In a way he felt as if he were about to undertake another MI6 mission, only this time it was personal.

It also meant that he was completely on his own. If something went wrong . . .

Alex put the thought out of his head. If something went wrong he'd deal with it himself. He wasn't a baby. If he got to this place—151 Embrin Street, he'd confirmed from an internet search—and it looked at all suspect, he could always turn around and go home. Maybe. He was fairly adept at assessing risk, he thought. He was fourteen years old, and he'd been through a lot.

He disembarked at the Brixton tube station and pulled out the map he'd tucked into his jacket. He couldn't find directions on the internet, so he'd have to go about this the old fashioned way. Alex didn't mind. He trusted his sense of direction. He found his bearings and began to head southwest, following the line he'd drawn on the map.

* * *

One-five-one Embrin Street had once been an elegant Victorian house. Now it was condemned, its façade scarred with graffiti and shedding paint in blistering scales. The windows were boarded up and the front door was crossed with police tape. A sign had been posted out front:

**PREMISES CONDEMNED – COMMERCIAL REZONING  
LUKAS PROPERTIES LLC  
DANGER – NO TRESPASSING**

Alex made sure that no pedestrians were in view as he stole around the side of the house and looked for a way in. All of the windows were shut up and too far from the ground, but he found that the back door, while draped with yellow tape like the front door, had been recently broken in. The moldering lock was completely busted, and a few hearty shoves torqued the rust-fused hinges enough to allow Alex to sidle his way inside.

The house was dark and musty and smelled like rotting upholstery. Alex winced at the general state of decay and slipped his bookbag off of one shoulder, digging out his flashlight. He clicked it on and readjusted his bag, then began his search.

The old floorboards creaked under his sneakers, and Alex reminded himself that this house was condemned and he should be mindful of loose planks and rotten timber. It wouldn't do to fall through a weak spot in the floor and break his leg. Who knows how long he'd be stuck down there, or if he'd ever be found.

He moved carefully from one room to another, shining his light over mildew-encrusted counter tops and moth-eaten furniture, looking for some indication of disturbance. The first floor turned up nothing. Alex warily stood at the base of the stairs and looked up into the silent darkness. Then, with a sigh of resignation, he mounted the squeaky steps one at a time.

The second floor was as fruitless as the first, and there were only two storeys so far as he could tell. Alex began to wonder if he'd overlooked something. He was just about to conclude his search of the upper floor and retrace his steps back down when he noticed a narrow door just to the right of the stairs. He'd thought it was a closet so he hadn't bothered examining it, but as he walked closer he saw faint light glowing from under the door. All of the windows were boarded up and there was certainly no electricity connected, so where was that light coming from?

Alex turned the rickety old knob and opened the door. A narrow staircase led up into a tiny room—an attic! As quickly as his caution would allow, Alex crept up the stairs and found himself in a bare, empty room. No furniture, no pictures on the wall, nothing. Three cracked windows allowed the afternoon light to stream in, which must have been the light source Alex had seen from under the door. A small cast-iron stove crouched against the adjacent wall, its pipes disappearing into the water-stained wall. Particles of dust floated weightlessly in the yellow-white beams. But it wasn't the shabby beauty which made Alex catch his breath; directly opposite the stairs was a sheet of plywood propped against the wall. Spray-painted on it in huge letters were two words:

**_UNDER HERE_**

His heart pounding with excitement, Alex started hastily across the attic floor. Three strides later he felt his ankle catch against something and a cold, clenching dread shot through his body like lightning. _Oh my God, how could I've been so stupid?_

He stumbled and dropped his flashlight but managed to right himself at the last second. He turned around and saw for the first time the clear plastic tripwire that had been stretched across the width of the room. The light from the windows had made it impossible to notice at first, but Alex definitely noticed it now. Somewhere—behind the wall? Under the floor?—he could hear a quiet, rapid clicking. It reminded Alex of Jack's kitchen timer, the cute little tomato she used whenever she baked biscuits or instant lasagna. There was a timer counting down somewhere in this room, but Alex knew it would do more than give a cheery little ding when it stopped.

His first instinct was to turn around, leap down the stairs, and try to make it out of the house before whatever the tripwire was attached to went off. But his second, more powerful instinct was to find out what was under that sheet of plywood. And if he was going to die, Alex would rather go down with the information that had cost him his life rather than fleeing like a coward.

He bolted over to the sheet of plywood and heaved it over with a clatter. Another message lay behind it, scrawled onto the peeling floral wallpaper.

**_Stay warm. You'll live longer._**

Alex grimaced, confused and frustrated and angry. He'd come all this way to discover this pearl of groundbreaking new wisdom, and now he probably didn't even have enough time to—

A muffled explosion rocked the house. Clouds of plaster rained down from the ceiling as the awful sound of squealing, shattering wood stabbed into Alex's ears. The floor beneath his feet abruptly sagged, gaps opening up between the boards, and yet all he could think about was that stupid message. Well, staying warm wouldn't help him live longer in _this_ situa—

Wait. _Stay warm_. The stove!

Alex threw himself onto the cast-iron relic just as the floor tumbled out from under him with a thunderous crash. The stove detached and plummeted with the rest of the attic, leaving the L-shaped stovepipe sticking out in the air forlornly. Alex hauled himself up to where the pipe was mounted horizontally into the wall and held on as he listened to the second floor collapse onto the first. A century of dust filled the air like a sandstorm, covering Alex from head to toe. He dangled in midair, his arms locked around the pipe above his head. He swung his legs forward and wrapped them around the longer vertical section, taking some of the strain off his hands.

He waited for the dust to settle, cursing Yassen Gregorovich with every foul word in every language he knew. It was a good thing he had decided to look under the plywood, he thought bitterly, glancing down into the wreckage of the first and second floors. If he had gone with his first instinct he never would have made it out alive. The whole house would have come down on him, trapping him in the rubble. Yassen must have known that the boy's determination would keep him from running. Alex was beginning to get the feeling that the assassin was just toying with him, trying to get him killed. If that was the case, Alex didn't want to play this stupid, dangerous game anymore.

He coughed and blinked rapidly to keep the debris out of his eyes. Now, where could he go from here? The closest window only a foot or two away. Maybe if he climbed up on the pipe he could swing over and crawl out the window. Alex looked up at the old iron duct, wondering if it was strong enough to bear his weight, and felt a jolt of shock course through him. A number had been chalked on the underside, in a place where one had to be hanging in this exact precarious position to read it. After having seen so many of these messages, Alex knew it to be Yassen's handwriting.

**_881 6.223.92736_**

It looked like some kind of international phone number. Alex felt a renewed sense of energy flood through him. He had some choice words for whoever was on the other end of the line.

He took a moment to memorize the number before beginning his clumsy maneuvers around the pipe. He got quite a fright when he swung over and grabbed onto the sill; part of it had rotted away and it came off in his hand, and for one horrible moment he thought he was going to fall. He quickly found another handhold and scuffed his feet against the wall, pulling himself up as far as he could. He tucked his hand inside his jacket sleeve and punched through the single pane of glass until he had cleared a safe passage. He sucked in a breath of fresh air when he finally pulled himself through the window. Then he sneezed. He was going to be coughing up dust for a year, he thought.

It was sheer luck that a decrepit old rose trellis lay just below the window. Alex let go of the sill and caught hold of it on his way down, hoping against hope that it wouldn't break under his weight. The old wood shrieked and pulled away from the house for a gut-wrenching second, but then it held fast and didn't come any looser. Alex heaved a grateful sigh and slowly worked his way down, repeating the number under his breath lest he forget it. As soon as he had touched solid ground again he dug inside his bookbag for a pen and wrote the number down on the palm of his hand.

He spared a glance at his watch. Almost 5:30. Jack was going to start wondering where he was. Taking one last look around the yard, Alex walked innocently to the front and began to make his way back toward the tube station, glad to feel the asphalt under his feet.

Despite his supposed success, Alex couldn't help but feel the slightest bit disappointed. He'd solved the riddle of the letter, traveled across London, risked his life in a condemned old house, yet all he had to show for it in the end was a cryptic number. He wasn't even sure if it was a phone number. It could be anything. Another address, a routing number, somebody's identification number . . . He didn't even know if any of this meant anything. Maybe Yassen Gregorovich just got a kick out of luring curious fourteen-year-old boys into deadly traps. It wouldn't surprise Alex if he did.

He was almost at the station when he passed by a payphone. He stopped, considering his options. Well, the best way of finding out if this number meant anything was by the good old process of elimination. Alex stepped into the booth and took the receiver off its cradle, then dug through his pockets and pulled out a few pieces of change. He deposited them all. If he was correct in assuming that this was an international phone number, it might end up costing him.

He began punching in the numbers, vaguely wondering what he was going to say if somebody picked up. Maybe nobody would. It was possible that this could be another trap. Maybe by dialing this number he'd trigger a remote detonator somewhere that would blow up a square mile of central London. It didn't seem very wise to be doing this, but he kept pecking at the keypad until he ran out of numbers.

Alex held the phone to his ear and waited for the call to connect. He stared out of the Plexiglas booth and drummed his fingers against the phone base, aware that his pulse was racing and his mouth had gone dry. His heart jumped when he heard a click, but then a pre-recorded operator came on: "_We're sorry. The extension you are trying to reach is no longer in service. Please hang up and try the number again_."

Alex slammed the phone into its cradle with a growl. Figures. All that effort and no reward. He'd just wasted an entire afternoon when he could have been playing football or doing his homework. He should have known better. He _did_ know better, which was the most aggravating thing of all. Damn Yassen Gregorovich and his sadistic mind games.

Coins clinked into the return cup and Alex collected his change, stuffing it into his pocket as he left the booth and melted into the thin stream of pedestrians. He felt annoyed and frustrated and in dire need of a shower. What an incredible disappointment this had been. Well, at least he'd learned his lesson. Sort of.

Brooding and dejected, Alex filed into the tube station and did what he should have done yesterday morning.

He crumpled up the letter and tossed it into the trash.

* * *

It was just past midnight in the South Pacific. The wealthy young CEO of a Singapore-based mechanical engineering plant—the largest in the world—appeared as a blob of red through the infrared scope, mounted on the sleek matte-black stock of a .308 Snaiperskaya Vintovka-98 rifle. Though its bolt-action magazine was capable of holding ten rounds, there were only two rounds chambered. But all the sniper needed was one.

He had the target within the crosshairs when he felt the satellite phone on his belt vibrate silently. Incoming call. Ignoring the interruption, the assassin checked his sights one last time and then squeezed the trigger.

A hundred meters away a bullet tore through John Liu Wu's head with just the smallest spurt of blood. He was dead before he hit the pavement. Shouting security guards rushed from the building, but their voices were faint by the time they reached the warehouse one block across the street.

Yassen Gregorovich ducked away from the window and efficiently began to dismantle his weapon, packing it into its case and then disappearing from the unlit room like a panther. He tapped lightly down three flights of stairs, his boots scarcely making a sound, and passed through the rear exit like a shadow in the night. He slid into the plush leather seat of a heavily-tinted Acura NSX and seconds later was heading down the Pan Island Expressway to Changi International Airport. His flight would be leaving in 35 minutes. Mission accomplished.

Yassen kept one hand on the wheel and pulled his tactical gloves off with his teeth, tossing them on the passenger seat. He turned his head to the side and popped his neck, enjoying the pleasant glow of power that came with successfully completing a hit. Perhaps he'd hang around Malaysia for a few days, disappear among the white sand beaches and turquoise-blue waters. He was still getting paid for seven days, so what the hell. He appreciated the natural beauty of the world, even though he was incapable of relaxing in it.

He remembered the call that had come in earlier and slipped his satellite phone out of its leather holster. He studied the ID message with vague surprise. Well, well, well. That had certainly been fast. Part of him was disappointed that his warning had been ignored, but another part of him was glad that the bait had been taken. The next step of his plan was ready for initiation.

Yassen shifted to second gear with a razor-sharp grin and streaked away into the balmy night.

Malaysia could wait. He had business calling in London.


	3. An Unexpected Reunion

**CHAPTER THREE: AN UNEXPECTED REUNION  
**

.

Alex's cell phone rang at exactly eight o'clock Saturday morning. He sprang up from his warm tangle of sheets and slapped his alarm clock. The ringing persisted. So did Alex, beating at the innocent timepiece until his brain finally put two and two together. He dragged himself out of bed and stumbled over to his desk, forcing himself to wake up. He glanced at the number on the incoming call and seriously considered declining. But what did it matter? They'd get through to him somehow or another.

"Hullo," he mumbled.

"_Good morning, Alex_," said Mrs Jones. "_I hope I'm not disturbing you_."

Alex sank down into his desk chair and rubbed his eyes. Hadn't MI6 ever heard of weekends? "No, I was just getting up. What do you want?" He didn't mean to sound so testy, but he really didn't appreciate being woken up out of a sound sleep by people who regularly put him in harm's way.

"_Well, a few days ago we received some information regarding_—"

"I didn't mean to destroy that house," Alex interrupted, his heart thumping. "It was condemned anyway, so I don't see what the troub—"

"_What house?_"

Alex winced, mentally kicking himself. "Never mind. You were saying?"

"_We received some information regarding an old friend of yours_."

The face of Yassen Gregorovich—exaggerated by frosty, merciless eyes and a menacing scowl, of course—flashed through Alex's mind. His muscles froze and his mouth dried up. "What about him?"

"_He contacted us last night; said he was visiting London and would like to see you. He's waiting for you here at headquarters. We thought it would be best for the two of you to meet under the supervision of MI6 rather than send him to you personally, considering your past association with him_."

"Well, I should hope so!" cried Alex, unable to believe what he was hearing. Yassen Gregorovich—here in London! How could Mrs Jones be so blasé about it? It had to be someone else she was talking about. Surely the assassin wouldn't just walk into the Royal & General and give himself up . . .

"_Are you alright, Alex?_" Mrs Jones asked. "_You sound upset_."

Alex was already wrestling his legs into his jeans. "I'm fine. I'm just . . . just a little bit shocked is all." Shocked was hardly the word, but this wasn't the time to riffle through one's mental thesaurus looking for a more appropriate synonym. "I'll be there in thirty minutes."

"_Excellent. I'll be sure to let him know_."

"You do that," Alex muttered, then hung up before Mrs Jones could deliver any more gut-wrenching news.

He pulled a dark blue Gap tee over his head and dashed to the bathroom down the hall. He didn't even bother combing his hair, which was sticking up in disheveled blond tufts. He brushed his teeth and tied his shoelaces at the same time—a task that defied physics—before thumping downstairs and greeting Jack, who had the TV tuned to her favorite morning talk show. She was munching a bowl of some hideous rainbow-colored cereal.

"Hey!" she called as Alex flew past her. "Where're you running off to?"

"Football," he answered, feeling a pang of guilt. He'd never get used to lying, especially not to Jack.

"Well jeez, take a banana or something so you don't pass out!"

"Alright." He ignored her admonition and opened the front door. "I'll be back after lunch."

"Okay, sweetie. Have fun!"

Alex shut the door behind himself and fetched his bike, his thoughts coming so fast they were nothing but blurs. Just last week he'd risked life and limb to chase down a series of messages left by Yassen Gregorovich, and all he had learned from it was that the Russian had a sick sense of humor. It had taken Alex days to stop sniffling, and he wasn't even allergic to dust.

Could it really be that MI6 had gotten their hands on Gregorovich? Why else would they have contacted Alex at this hour of the day, on a Saturday of all days, when he should be out playing sports and roaming the shopping center with friends? What could be so important that they should tear him away from his one chance of the week to be a normal teenager?

As he pedaled down King's Road, the wind whistling in his ears, Alex gloomily wondered if he had ever been normal to begin with.

* * *

He chained his bike outside of Sloane Square and took the tube to Liverpool Street, jogging the rest of the way to the Royal & General. The antique-looking brick building was beginning to establish its own personality in Alex's mind, one of a grouchy old neighbor or an arrogant, powerful businessman. Neither were likable characters, and Alex couldn't have liked MI6 less this morning.

He pushed through the front entrance, the sweat on his neck cooling in the climate-controlled building. In fact, it seemed almost too cold in here. He crossed the plain, unassuming lobby in a few quick strides, nodding to the receptionist en route to the elevators. These were all very grown-up motions he was going through, and while some boys his age might have been delighted to tout such an air of self-importance, Alex felt only resentment. And fear. He'd given nearly four months of his life to MI6. Who knew how much more time they planned to take from him?

The elevator opened on the tenth floor—Conference and Mission Briefing. This was the customary place Alex was brought whenever he was summoned by MI6, though the circumstances of this meeting were something quite different. His stomach knotted with nervousness as he thought about who could be waiting for him. It turned out to be John Crawley, the thinning-haired, blotchy-faced MI6 office manager. He was standing outside the door to one of the conference rooms, thumbing through a manila file folder. He looked up when he saw Alex approaching.

"Ah, Alex," he greeted. "So good of you to come on such short notice."

"Sure. It's not as if I have life or anything," Alex muttered, not caring that he was being openly rude. He was scared and angry. He fought the urge to bite his nails and instead clenched his fists.

Crawley smiled thinly and ignored the acidic remark, gesturing to the door through which he'd just come. "Your guest is right in there. I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me now, Alex, I've a few errands to run." He held up the folder as if it were all the proof he needed. "If you need anything, you can contact us using the intercom."

"You don't happen to have a gun, do you?"

"Come again?"

"Never mind," Alex sighed. "Give my regards to Mr Blunt." _And my remains_, he thought ruefully.

Crawley quirked his eyebrow and smiled as if he'd just missed the punch line. "Right. Well. Until later, then."

And with a parting nod he left Alex standing outside the door to Conference Room #4, staring at the silver door handle with panic brewing in his guts. _Well_, he thought, _better get this over with_. Taking a deep breath, Alex grasped the handle and pushed open the door.

The conference room was clean and bright, sunshine streaming through the three windows on the far wall. A well-built man in a black suit stood by the door, hands clasped behind his back in military fashion. He glanced briefly at Alex before looking away, uninterested. From what Alex could tell, he appeared to be some sort of personal security guard—he had a communications device in his ear, and the wire disappeared into his collar. He didn't speak. A long polished table occupied the middle of the room, surrounded by chairs. One of them was turned away, facing the windows. It swung around at the sound of the door shutting, and Alex was roundly stunned when he saw who was sitting in it.

"_James_?"

James Sprintz—son of Dieter Sprintz, the legendary German banker and financier—beamed when he spotted Alex and rose from his seat. "Finally!" he exclaimed. "I was beginning to think they'd changed their minds."

He trotted over and gave Alex a casual one-armed hug. Alex did his best to return it in his state of shock, thinking back to the phone conversation with Mrs Jones that morning. _An old friend of yours . . . Visiting London, would like to see you . . . Meet under the supervision of MI6 . . . Considering your past association with him . . ._

Now it all made sense. Alex had met James Sprintz while undercover at Point Blanc Academy in France, an exclusive reformatory school for unruly boys. The Academy had been headed by the late Dr Grief, a demented scientist who had been plotting to replace the sons of these wealthy, powerful parents with young clones of himself. James had been Alex's only real friend at Point Blanc, but due to the circumstances of Alex's mission neither had been able to say goodbye to one another before being sent home.

Alex allowed himself to smile, mostly with relief. "Well, this is . . . quite a surprise," he said, taking in James' new appearance. He'd changed since Point Blanc, almost as if the terrible experience had forced him to grow up. He'd lost weight and had a healthier, less pale complexion. His hair had been cut, though it was still longer than Alex's; he had a habit of tossing his head to keep it out of his eyes. He wore a sport coat over a vintage Godzilla t-shirt and a pair of designer jeans that looked as if they'd come from a second-rate thrift store. Alex could never see the appeal in grungy fashion, but that was just his personal opinion.

James continued to grin, apparently delighted at their reunion. "Hope I didn't cause you any trouble," he said. "When MI6 made me sign the Official Secrets Act, I told them that I wanted to see you again—you know, to thank you for saving my life and everything. They told me they would arrange something. I guess they weren't in any hurry." Though he spoke perfect English, there was a faint hint of a German accent woven into his words.

"Yeah, that's MI6," muttered Alex. "Everything on their terms and at their convenience." He nodded to the guard by the door. "Who's the suit?"

"Max, I think his name is. My father sent him—he always makes me travel with a bodyguard. Kidnapping and all that. Just ignore him, he's mostly for decoration."

Alex smirked. "Right. So your father's in London then?"

The boys gravitated toward the windows as they talked. James crossed his arms and sighed. "No, he's in Switzerland. Business, as usual. I'm here visiting my mother. She has a place in London. I come and see her sometimes."

"Looks like you were in the right place at the right time."

"Yeah," James agreed. "Lucky me. For a while I thought I might actually have to track you down myself." He nudged Alex in the ribs playfully.

With a cold sensation tightening in his chest, Alex suddenly remembered the letter he'd gotten a week ago, the one from Yassen Gregorovich, warning him to "stay out of this". Apparently some people were entirely capable of tracking him down. Alex hadn't had a decent night's sleep since.

"So," James went on, slapping one of the chairs into a spin, "how about we ditch this place and go find someplace fun to hang out?"

Alex looked up, his dark memory vanishing in the gleam of James' mischievous grin. "Ditch?"

"Yeah. Like, leave. Disappear. Beat it. Go AWOL."

"But we can't just _leave_."

"Why not? It's not like we're trapped on top of a snowy mountain or anything. Nothing is keeping us here."

Alex shook his head with a helpless smile. "You're a bad influence, James."

"Well I do have a reputation to keep, you know," James sniffed, pointing his nose in the air like a prude and making Alex laugh. He was suddenly very glad that James had come to see him. He missed the feeling of having close friends and a happy, carefree attitude. Though he hadn't entered Point Blanc Academy with the intention of making friends, much less being remembered, Alex was glad to have met James Sprintz.

"Come on," dared James, "last one out the building eats dog crap!"

"No, wait! You can't just—!"

The two teens made a break for the door, plowing through it like rats escaping a sinking ship.

Max Körtig, loyal employee of the Sprintz family for nearly ten years, let out a long-suffering sigh and turned to follow the boys, who were already thundering down the hall like a couple of over-caffeinated hooligans.

* * *

From the sixteenth floor of the Royal & General, Alan Blunt watched Alex Rider and his little friend tumble out onto the sidewalk and head west, followed closely by their black-suited escort. He turned away from the window and looked over at Mrs Jones. "I think the boys will get on just fine," he said, sipping his tea.

"Good," Mrs Jones replied, and glanced down at the open folder in her hands. It was the one Crawley had delivered to her a short while ago, a dossier of James' father, Dieter Sprintz. "Let's just hope Alex will forgive us."

"Still concerned about that, are you?"

"We're not endearing ourselves to him by using his friends, Alan," she said sharply. "We ought to be more sensitive. He's just a boy, you know. If we keep alienating him like this he's bound to turn from us."

Blunt waved his hand dismissively. "He's a teenager. He's supposed to feel alienated."

Mrs Jones closed the file with a sigh. "We're damaging him and you know it."

Blunt turned back to the window and raised his teacup to his thin, gray lips. "He was already broken when he came to us, Tulip. A few more cracks won't matter."


	4. A Friend Indeed

**CHAPTER FOUR: A FRIEND INDEED**

.

For the first time since his uncle's death, Alex felt like a normal fourteen-year-old again. And it felt _great_.

He and James had bolted from the Royal & General and raced down to Liverpool Street Station, where they boarded the first tube they came upon. They didn't care where it took them, as long as it got them away from MI6. Max kept up with the boys surprisingly well, remaining as firmly attached to them as a shadow. James completely ignored his bodyguard. He must have been used to it, Alex thought, growing up surrounded by security, servants, everything that a millionaire's son could ask for. Or didn't ask for.

It was a little unnerving, the constant reminder that James Sprintz was a person of wealth and importance. Alex had to wonder a few times why James was being so nice to him. Maybe he was lonely, ignored by his parents, had no mates at school. Being constantly expelled couldn't have helped; with James' history of delinquency, Alex couldn't imagine he had very many close friends. He wasn't a weirdo or anything—he seemed as much of a normal kid as Alex. If Alex Rider was what one might call normal. Maybe it was their misfit natures that caused them to get along so well. After all, James was the only person Alex's age who knew his secret. It was a liberating feeling, not having to watch every word he said around James or tiptoe around the truth, all the while pretending he wasn't just some government tool. When Alex was with James he didn't feel as if he had the black cloud of MI6 hanging over his head. For once he could just be himself.

The tube, by happy chance, led them west to Piccadilly Circus, and together the boys spent the rest of the morning prowling Shaftesbury Avenue, wandering in and out of stores, goofing around, and generally behaving like a couple of kids. Alex discovered that James was a football fan, though he claimed he wasn't very good at the sport, and that he liked punk and surf music (whatever that was). Alex wasn't familiar with any of James' favorite bands, and James, who couldn't fathom that there was a person on Earth who hadn't heard of The Ramones, had immediately hauled Alex to the nearest music store to rectify the problem. They spent nearly an hour in Zavvi, sampling CDs and video games and almost breaking a PlayStation in the process. It was fun.

After the media blitzkrieg, James had insisted they keep up their entertainment binge by going to a movie. Alex would rather have stayed outside and enjoyed the sunny weather, but James was obviously more of the "indoor" sort, possibly even a bit of a geek, and he wasn't accustomed to hearing the word "no". Alex finally agreed, and James had happily paid for both of their tickets. They'd spent the next hundred minutes slouched in their seats, hypnotized by Lara Croft kicking villain ass in the tightest clothes ever made. James chuckled under his breath every time the buxom female lead was onscreen, and added some pretty witty (and raunchy) commentary. Alex found himself idly wondering if women like this actually existed. It would be nice, wouldn't it? Put them to work for MI6, save the world every other week, get Yassen Gregorovich off his back . . .

Alex winced. No, _no_. He wasn't going to think about that now, not when he'd practically forgotten all about being a spy and was finally beginning to feel like a regular person. No, he was going to sit here and ogle Angelina's Jolie's massive knockers until the credits rolled, then smile and walk out of the theater whistling _Rule Britannia_. No way was he going to let MI6 control his thoughts as well as his actions.

It was well past noon by the time the movie let out, and both James and Alex were famished. They headed for the nearest fast food restaurant and ordered to go, then roamed around looking for a shaded, green spot to sit and eat lunch.

It was just after three o'clock now and the boys were loitering under the trees at Green Park , finishing the last soggy French fries from their lunches whenever they stopped talking long enough to chew. Alex slurped lukewarm Coke through a straw and listened to James describe his family, his favorite football club, his trip to New York the month before. For a boy who'd spent most of his life sheltered by money and power, James seemed to know a lot about the gritty reality of the world. He talked like someone who had seen the darker side of life, someone who wasn't fourteen. Alex wondered if Point Blanc had done this to him, or if perhaps there was more to James' life than garden parties and armed escorts.

The day had warmed up enough that James found it necessary to shrug off his sport coat. Alex happened to glance over and notice what looked like a large square Band-Aid on James' upper arm. "What's that?" he asked, pointing.

James looked down at the patch as if he'd forgotten about it, then passed Alex a one-sided smirk. "Trying to kick the habit."

"Really? It's that bad?"

"Bad enough for my mother. She finally had it with me smoking in her car. Next thing I know I'm on the Patch and forbidden to carry a lighter. Overreacting, as usual." James reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a shiny silver Zippo, nonchalantly flicking the lid open and closed. "I've had this one for years. Never leave home without it."

Alex briefly wondered if James was a pyromaniac. It would definitely be on par with his bad boy reputation. "How long have you smoked?"

"Since I was twelve. I started just to piss off my parents. I didn't smoke very often, but it was still enough to annoy them."

Alex stared at the patch and tried to imagine what it'd be like if he were battling a nicotine addiction at fourteen. All the images of black lungs and stained teeth from his health books didn't paint a pretty picture of the future. "How's it going, quitting?"

"I don't know. I just started yesterday."

"Well, you seem to be doing alright."

James shrugged and absently plucked at the grass. "It's easier not to think about it when I'm around other people, especially if they're not adults."

Alex's eyes wandered over Max's subtle, ever-present person. He was standing perhaps ten meters away under a tree, arms crossed, his cautious gaze sweeping the area and looking for any sign of threat.

"I know what you mean," Alex murmured, thinking about how different his life had been before Yassen Gregorovich had ruined it in one fell swoop.

For a few moments neither of them spoke. Then James finished off the rest of his Sprite and said haltingly, as if bringing up a delicate subject, "So . . . your dad was really a spy?"

"My uncle," Alex corrected. "But yes, he was a spy."

"Oh. I didn't know he was your uncle. What about your parents?"

"They died in a plane crash when I was a baby. Ian was the only family I had left."

"Was he . . . I mean, it wasn't an accident, was it? He really got killed by bad guys?"

Alex nodded, staring listlessly at passers-by. His face had lost all expression, as if he were reliving all of the unpleasant memories of the Stormbreaker mission and his brief, tragedy-laden life.

James noticed the change that had come over Alex and immediately tried to backpedal. "Hey, if I'm getting too personal, just say so. I mean, I don't want to offend you and it's none of my business anyway—"

"No, it's all right. It's actually sort of nice to be able to talk about this with someone who . . . you know. Is my age."

James smiled like he'd just been complimented. "I know, right? With me being tutored at home now, I haven't talked to anyone under thirty in at least two weeks. All my old friends have forgotten me. You know, the ones I had before Point Blanc. They weren't really friends, though. Just guys I hung out with. You still go to school, right? MI6 hasn't dragged you out of it?"

"Not yet. But they might as well have for all the days I missed last term."

"Hm, yeah. Kind of hard to save the world and turn in your homework on time, I bet."

Alex grinned despite himself, his grim mood beginning to lift. "I guess. What about you? What's your tutor like?"

"Well, I haven't shot her with an air pistol yet, so I guess I stand a chance at learning something. Whatever, _ich geb's auf._"

The boys shared a chuckle. Before being sent to Point Blanc, James had been expelled from his school in Dusseldorf for plinking one of his teachers with just such a weapon. It seemed as if his wild days were behind him now, and the teenager sitting in the shade with Alex wasn't that much different from himself. Still, he had to wonder . . .

"Look, James," he said. "Don't take this personally or anything, but why are you here? Really."

James looked genuinely surprised by the question. "What do you mean?"

God, Alex hated doing this. It felt as bad as cheating or stealing. Why did he have to be so suspicious of everybody? Why couldn't he believe that people were still kind and genuine? This whole spy business was ruining his life from every angle. "I'm sorry. It's just that . . . I'm not the sort of . . ." _Oh, hell with it. Tell the truth_. "I don't have a lot of friends these days, James. I have a problem trusting people, no matter how nice they are."

"Well, that's understandable. You are a spy, after all," James pointed out.

"So you see why I'm so . . ." Alex struggled to find the right words. He didn't want to drive James away with his stupid problems, yet that's exactly what he felt like he was doing. "Why we . . . Why I can't—"

"Why a spoiled little rich boy would go out of his way to befriend someone he barely even knew? Is that it?"

Alex felt his face flush with embarrassment. "I don't think you're a spoiled—"

James waved his hand dismissively. "Come on, that's exactly what I am. Look up 'spoiled rotten brat' in the dictionary and you'll see my picture." He grinned lopsidedly at Alex. "But I understand. People like us don't exactly end up best mates, do we?"

"I don't know."

James scooted closer to Alex, until their shoulders bumped and they were sitting hip-to-hip. "Look. Alex. When I heard what you'd done, escaping from the academy on a bloody ironing board and all that, and bringing down Dr Grief, I was . . . well, truthfully, I was a little jealous at first. In school I never got along with your kind. You know. The sporty, straight-A, overachiever types. But then I thought, 'You know, this Alex guy saved my life, he must be pretty damn cool.' So I wanted to meet you, see if you were as cool as I thought you were."

"And?"

"_Well_," James huffed. "Aside from not knowing _anything_ about The Ramones, I guess you're a pretty okay guy. I'll just have to let you borrow my CDs or something. Get you into the movies more often."

"Shut up," Alex snapped, but he was smiling.

"Seriously though," said James, "I really do mean it. You're a hell of a guy, Rider. I like you." He threw a soft punch at Alex's shoulder. "Thanks for saving my arse."

"Maybe next time you'll learn to keep your arse out of trouble."

"Ha, we'll see. Which reminds me, we haven't been to Funland yet."

Alex's face fell. "You can't be serious."

"Oh, I'm very serious!" James jeered, springing to his feet.

"We'll be thrown out of there in five minutes."

"Wanna bet? I say three ."

"I'm not betting anything—you're mad!" Alex cried, but James grabbed onto his arm and pulled him to his feet. "No, really, I can't go. Jack—" Oh no, _Jack_.

James stopped pulling when he saw the look of horror cross his friend's face. "Uh oh. What's up?"

Alex looked at his watch and grimaced. "_Brilliant_. I told Jack I was going to be back after lunch and it's already three-twenty."

James stood still a moment, letting it sink in nice and slow, before resuming his task of dragging Alex roughly in the direction of Funland. "Oh well. She'll forgive you."

"No, James, I can't, really. Ever since Ian . . . and MI6. Just. I don't want her to worry."

"What's she got to worry about?" James asked, frowning, as if he couldn't grasp that a parent or caretaker would actually worry if a child wasn't home by a certain time.

"Plenty, believe me," Alex muttered.

James looked suddenly depressed, like he'd just been told playtime was over and he had to go home and study for an exam. "Aw, come on."

"_You_ come on."

"What?"

"I left my bike at Sloane Square. We can take the tube back together."

"Oh. Okay." James threw his coat over his shoulder and studied the ground, his dark hair falling loose from where he'd tucked it behind his ears. "Um. I don't really have to be anywhere for a while, so . . . I mean, is it alright if I come back to your place for a little while?"

Alex shrugged. "Sure. You're not riding on my bike, though."

"Pfft. You can _have_ it—I heard bike-riding will make your bollocks fall off."

"Wha—that's insane!"

"Nuh uh, I read it in a magazine! That Lance Armstrong guy, you know him, he's a professional cyclist, and one day his left bollock just popped _right off_ in the middle of a race—"

"He had cancer, for God's sake!"

"—and it fell out of his shorts and got caught in someone's spokes—"

"You're horrible!"

"—and then a dog made off with it and Lance Armstrong saw it and chased after it—"

Alex had to turn away and cover his mouth to keep from laughing. James grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, raving hysterically.

"—and the next thing you know the whole Tour De France was cutting through a field, chasing after this bollock-snatching dog!"

Alex didn't think he'd ever laughed this hard in his life. As irreverent as it was, the image of Lance Armstrong pedaling furiously after a mongrel with a whole troop of cyclists behind him, screaming for the return of his testicle, was something that brought tears to Alex's eyes.

"—and when they finally ran that mangy mutt down, it was covered in these big long bald patches from all the tires peeling out—"

"Stop, stop!" Alex begged, clutching his stomach and falling over, dragging James down with him.

"I'm dead serious, that really happened!"

"Oh, _bollocks_."

Now it was James' turn to cry. The two teens gasped and guffawed, sprawling all over the grass as if they couldn't tell up from down, going on about dogs and bikes and bollocks and drawing a few disapproving looks from passing pedestrians. They didn't care. They were in their own little world.

A few trees over, Max took off his sunglasses with a sigh and began to polish them. Kids. As far as he was concerned, they didn't grow up nearly fast enough. And some of them never did.

* * *

Four o'clock found Alex walking his bike through west Chelsea with James, snickering as he parroted back some of the colorful German slang James was teaching him. Though they'd left Green Park in a hurry, the warm sun and pleasant day had soon slowed them to a lazy, comfortable stroll. James agreed to vouch for Alex if he looked in danger of getting chewed out, but neither of them seemed to care too much one way or another. In a way, Alex was feeling the slightest bit sad that the day was coming to an end. He'd had a lot of fun, had probably laughed more today than in the past two weeks, and chances to just be himself were getting fewer and farther in between.

"I'm going to leave for Switzerland on Monday," James said, sounding a bit sad himself. "My dad thinks I should start learning about banking, so I'm meeting him down there for some kind of stupid field trip. 'Take your kid to work and bore him to death day' or something. _Scheiße_."

"Preparing to take over the family business someday?"

James shoved his hands in his pockets and sulked. "That's what _he_ thinks. If I had anything to say about it . . . Well, it sure as hell wouldn't be anything nice."

Alex looked over at James, scowling unhappily, and knew exactly how he felt. All his life Ian Rider had been training his nephew to become a spy, and even though Alex had thought the martial arts lessons and holidays abroad were just for fun, in truth they had been a deceptive cover for all of the skills Alex would need when he joined MI6.

MI6. The people who ruthlessly used him and didn't seem to care about his life one way or another. And who did he have to thank for all this? Yassen Gregorovich. Damn that man. Alex wasn't a hateful or violent person by nature, and he certainly wasn't one to want to bludgeon someone to death with a shovel, but there were always exceptions.

Alex heaved a heavy sigh and tried to dredge some cheer from his crummy mood. He owed James that much. "You'll still be here tomorrow, right? Maybe we can get together, hang out or something."

James immediately brightened. "Sounds like a plan. My mother wants me to go somewhere with her tomorrow morning, but I should be free the rest of the afternoon. Hey, you could even come over if you want. She's got an indoor pool. We can see who'll be the first to paralyze himself jumping from the high dive."

"That's not even funny," said Alex, but he was smiling nevertheless.

In a few minutes they'd reached the Rider residence on Cheyne Walk, and Alex leaned his bike up against the front stoop.

"I feel kind of bad about your bodyguard," he said, staring over James' shoulder at Max, hanging back a few doors down. "Shouldn't we invite him in?"

"Nah, he's a big boy," James said airily. "He can look after himself for a little while."

"I thought he was looking after _you_," Alex snorted, fishing his keys out of his pocket.

"Yeah, that's just what we _want_ you to think—I'm really a fourteenth-degree black belt and I can shoot lightning bolts out of my fingertips. Byeerowowowow!"

He gave Alex a demonstration, sticking his fingers into Alex's side and making him squawk. They stumbled through the front door in a guffawing, roughhousing scuffle and then hastily tried to regain their composure in the foyer. The house was silent—no radio, no TV, no vacuum whirring or washing machine humming. Jack must be out; she was usually the noisy sort.

"Jaack, I'm home!" Alex called as James closed the door behind them. "Hello, anyone here?"

Something crinkled under his sneaker and he abruptly paused, lifting his foot from a legal-sized manila envelope lying in the middle of the foyer. Alex frowned. Since when did the postal service deliver twice in the same day? He bent down and retrieved the envelope, his skin already beginning to crawl.

"What's that?" James asked, peering over Alex's shoulder.

"I don't know."

There was no address, no stamp, no writing of any kind on the outside. The envelope wasn't even fully sealed. There was no way it could have gone through the mail, even if the postman had decided to make a second trip. This had been delivered personally. With his heart beginning to pound, Alex unfolded the flap and shook out its contents.

It was a paper wallet of standard-sized photos, like the kind developed at a photo boutique. This one had _Shutterfly Photography_ printed all over it. There were no negatives, and the photos flopped around loosely. Alex pulled them out and stared at the first photo, a sickening-hot feeling blooming in his stomach.

It was a photo of James and himself walking down the street, McDonald's take-out in hand, on their way to Green Park.

"Oh God," James muttered, his voice low and worried. "Alex, what is this?"

Quickly Alex flipped to the next photo. He and James were leaving Cineworld, their smiles frozen on their faces as they chatted excitedly about the movie they'd just seen. In the next photo they were coming out of Zaavi and on their way to the theater. Alex shuffled through a chronology of his entire day, with some of the images so disturbingly close-up that Alex found himself digging for any memory of suspicious individuals or noises, but all of his attention had been focused on James. He couldn't remember a thing.

The last photo—or the first, technically—was that of Alex and James boarding the tube at Liverpool Street Station. And then it was back to the latest. That was it. A handful of intimate, invasive photos that served no real purpose other than to inform Alex that not even the toughest, most expert bodyguards could save him from being stalked. And there could be no question who the intended target was; Alex's face was centered and focused in every single photo.

"Looks like you have a fan," James said with a nervous grin.

Alex stuffed the photos back in the wallet and turned to give James a solemn, serious look. "There's only twelve of them. Twenty-four is the usual number of exposures. That means half of these photos are missing."

"Well, where are the rest?"

"I don't know." Alex stared down at the wallet. "But maybe someone at Shutterfly Photography will be able to tell me."


	5. The Awful Truth

**CHAPTER FIVE: THE AWFUL TRUTH**

.

"You're not actually _serious_ about this," James said, following Alex into the kitchen.

Alex didn't reply. He snatched the magnetic pad of Post-It notes from the refrigerator door and tore off the top sheet: Jack's message from earlier that afternoon, saying she was out doing some last-minute shopping for the week ahead. He picked up a nearby pen and hurriedly began to scrawl a note of his own.

James stared. "You _are_ serious. Alex, for God's sake, this is dangerous stuff—you could get _killed_."

"Don't I know it," Alex muttered, sticking the pad back on the refrigerator door. For a bare second he met James' worried eyes, but then he quickly forced himself to look away. "I have to go now."

"I'm going with you."

"Like hell you are."

"_Alex_."

"You'd slow me down, James. And you've got your bodyguard. It's not happening."

Alex made his way toward the door, James trotting after him, agitated. "So, what, you expect me to just go home now, like nothing happened?"

"That would be safest."

James reached out and grabbed Alex's arm, and Alex finally paused long enough to turn around. James looked hurt and angry—mostly hurt. It must be frustrating for a person of such power to be so powerless in moments like these.

Alex sighed. "James, this is something I've got to do on my own. It's personal. I don't want you getting involved . . . or getting hurt."

"I don't want you to get hurt, either," James snapped. "What if you get kidnapped by secret agents or something? Get held for ransom? What if I never see you again after today?"

Alex had to smile a little at James' paranoia. No doubt he was getting a taste of what his parents must worry about on a constant basis. "Nothing's going to happen. I know what I'm doing. Sort of, anyway." He grinned crookedly and shrugged.

James continued to scowl, but he let go of Alex's arm. "I guess there's no stopping you, is there?"

Alex shook his head.

James crammed his hands into his pockets and sulked, the classic posture of defeat. "Well, don't do anything stupid. I don't want to read about you getting shot or blown up in tomorrow's newspaper."

The thought flitted through Alex's mind that even if he _was_ killed, MI6 would make sure nobody knew about it. Certainly not the public in any case. Alex forced a smile and held out his hand. James sighed and grasped it, giving it a feeble shake.

"Don't worry about me," said Alex. "I'll be fine."

"I'll believe it when I see you tomorrow."

Alex smirked. "Until tomorrow then."

* * *

He locked up the house, traded phone numbers and parted ways with James at the front door. Max was standing by the front steps, talking quietly on his cell phone. He collected his ward while Alex mounted his bike, adjusted his Patagonia sling pack on his back, and began to pedal toward central London. James raised his hand in farewell, but Alex had already crossed the street and was out of sight.

Alex glanced down at his watch. Almost 4:30. Some of the smaller, locally-owned businesses in London closed up as early as five o'clock, and if Shutterfly Photography was just such a business, Alex didn't have much time. If he didn't get there before they closed, he'd have to wait a whole day—or worse, until Monday. By then it might be too late to find out any information about these photos. Time was of the essence right now, even though Alex had no real reason to believe this. It was just something he felt and instinctively knew.

He shifted gears and picked up the pace a little, his legs pumping and the warm summer breeze whipping through his hair. He repeated the address to himself under his breath: Shutterfly Photography, 128 Chapping Street. He hoped they would still be open when he arrived. It was quite a distance from Chelsea to Shadwell, and though Alex was tempted to take the tube, he didn't want to risk standing around and wasting precious time. Besides, the traffic wasn't too heavy today. He might just make it.

No, he _was going to_ make it.

Alex narrowed his eyes against the wind and pedaled harder.

* * *

Mike Martin, the fifty-four-year-old owner of Shutterfly Photography, was just about to flip the sign on the door to "closed" when a teenager exploded into his shop and almost bowled him over.

"I'm sorry," the boy apologized, panting for breath. His face looked hot and sweaty, as if he'd just run across town. "I tried to get here as fast as I could."

Martin had to smile at the kid. "Well, you made it by the skin of your teeth, lad," he said with a friendly chuckle. "Good timing. Here, come in and catch your breath. Wouldn't want you getting a stitch in your side. Now then, what can I do to help you?"

"Actually, I was hoping you could answer a few questions." Alex dug around in his pack and pulled out the paper wallet that contained the candid photos of himself and James. "I had these delivered to me this afternoon, but half are missing. I was wond—"

"Oh, you must be the boy Mr Schiroys was talking about. Alex, I presume?"

Alex couldn't have been more surprised, but he went along with it, playing it off as casually as he could. "Yeah, I'm Alex. So you've met Mr _Shee-roys_?"

Martin nodded. "Yes, he dropped off some film earlier this afternoon with instructions to give you the rest. Don't believe I've ever had a customer do that before, but that's his business, not mine. Come right this way and I'll get you your photos, Alex."

Alex balked for a moment, completely mystified by this unexpected turn of events, before following Martin over to the developing station. The man disappeared into a back room behind the counter, then reappeared moments later with a second wallet.

"Here you go," he said, sliding the packet over to Alex.

"What do I owe you?"

"Nothing. Mr Schiroys paid in advance, and even gave a little something extra for my trouble."

"Oh. Well. That was nice of him . . . Er, listen, I've only talked with Mr Schiroys over the telephone. Could you perhaps tell me what he looked like?"

Martin leaned on the counter and frowned as he tried to remember. "Hm, yes, a short fellow. Not much taller than you. A bit heavy, dark hair, maybe in his late forties. Seemed a bit out of it, if you ask me. Probably putting in too much time in the office. He had that burned-out look about him."

Alex took in the description and ran it against everyone he knew. Schiroys sounded like a complete stranger, which was slightly baffling. He'd been expecting someone a bit more familiar.

"Did he leave his full name?"

"It's right there on the envelope."

Alex flipped over the wallet and studied the name scrawled there.

_**George Van Schiroys**_

Though he was still as confused as ever, at least there was one bit of consolation that Alex had ascertained: George Van Schiroys was _not_ Yassen Gregorovich. The physical description, the handwriting—none of bore any resemblance to the Russian. Admittedly, Alex had been expecting him all along, which made this unexpected twist a bit difficult to swallow, even though there was some relief in it being someone else. Nevertheless, Alex was still being stalked—by a mysterious, burned-out businessman, apparently—and he didn't even know why. He certainly wasn't going to find any more answers here.

"Well, Mr . . . ?"

"Martin."

"Mr Martin, thank you for your trouble. I don't want to keep you wait—"

The man snapped his fingers suddenly. "Hang about, I almost forgot to give you this." He reached under the counter and pulled something out, then handed it to Alex. It was a pencil, one of the old-fashioned wooden kind. Alex hated wooden pencils. The tips always broke and left smeary smudges, and the erasers wore down too fast and ate through his paper. He preferred mechanical pencils. They were much neater.

"Er, thank you. But what am I supposed to do with this?"

"Haven't the slightest. But Mr Schiroys said I should give it to you."

Alex rolled the pencil through his fingers . It was white and covered with dozens of those classic, bright yellow smiley faces. It looked brand new, as if it had only been sharpened once. He glanced at the photos he held in one hand and the pencil in the other. What did this all mean? None of it made any sense.

He was beginning to feel frustrated and panicky, and those stupid smiley faces on the pencil weren't helping. They seemed to be grinning at him, giggling, as if they found his confusion incredibly amusing. Stupid pencil. Stupid photos. Stupid stalkers. Honestly, _Shee-roys_. What kind of a name was that anyway? Dutch? German? It didn't look like any normal name Alex had ever seen, that was for sure.

And then it hit him. Of _course_ it didn't look normal—it was fake. Made-up. A bunch of letters jumbled together in just the right order—

Alex startled the shopkeeper when he slapped the photo envelope down on the counter. Using the smiley-faced pencil, he hurriedly wrote the name "George Van Schiroys" vertically down one side. Then he wrote the name "Yassen Gregorovich" on the other side. One by one, Alex counted off the letters and drew a strike though each and every one until he ended with the H in Gregorovich.

George Van Schiroys. Yassen Gregorovich. It was a perfect anagram. A _perfect_ anagram.

That was it then. Yassen Gregorovich had probably paid some stranger—more likely threatened him—to drop off the photos he had taken. Maybe he did it to make himself less obvious. Or maybe he was busy rigging a trap somewhere else. Or maybe he just did it to mess with Alex's mind.

Alex smirked triumphantly. "Not today, George," he muttered.

"Everything alright?" asked Martin cautiously. This boy was beginning to worry him.

Alex looked up with a smile. "Yes. Everything's great. Thanks for your time, Mr Martin."

* * *

Outside Shutterfly Photography, Alex opened the second wallet of photos. There were twelve of them, making exactly twenty-four. Good, that meant he had all of them. He flipped through each of the new photos, expecting to see more images of himself. He was rather surprised to find nothing of the sort. Just buildings, signs, scenery around London. That was it. There was even one in here that looked like—

Alex raised his head and stared across the street. In front of him stood a row of old garages that had been converted into law offices. This was exactly what was shown in the first photo, no mistake. Alex bit his lip and looked down at the photos again. Was this a hint? Was he supposed to go across the street or something? Did he need an attorney? Was this some kind of silly game of hide-and-seek?

No, Alex realized with sudden clarity. He flipped through the rest of the photos. It was a map. All of these landmarks were keys. Stand in one photo and you'll see where the next one leads you, like following a trail of bread crumbs. Yassen had already used this method before with the letter, the button, all those notes. This was definitely his work.

Alex climbed onto his bike with an air of resignation. "I can't believe I'm doing this again," he muttered. The last time he'd followed the clues left by the Russian, it had almost gotten him killed. Whatever was waiting for him at the end of this investigation had better damned well be worth it.

After checking traffic both ways, Alex zipped across the street and straddled his bike in front of the law offices. He studied the second photo: a post box with a brick wall in the background, covered with fading adverts. Alex did a full 360 of his surroundings before spying the post box down the street. Feeling a bit more confident, he pointed his bike in that direction and began to follow the assassin's trail.

* * *

He stood in front of a shabby brick building near the docks and gazed down at the photo one last time. This was the place: the window on the fourth floor, right below the fading "D" in Richards & Sons. This was it, the final clue, the end of the line.

Alex tucked the photo into his pack again and leaned his bike against a sagging chain-link fence. The structure looked like it had once been a warehouse, then an apartment building, and finally a storage house for broken pieces of heavy equipment. Some kind of tomb for dead tractors. He sighed. Yassen must be indirectly trying to kill him, first with dust and now with tetanus. Whatever happened to the good old days of guns, poison and vehicular homicide?

He walked around the building twice before determining that there was no way in, at least for a civilized person. All of the doors were padlocked, the garage shutters were sealed shut, and there were bars on the windows, even though most of them were missing panes.

Alex glanced at his watch. Half past five. Jack was probably home by now and getting ready to make dinner . . . or pacing the floor and thinking about calling the cops. The note he'd left said he'd be back in "a little while", but that was over an hour ago.

_Wait just a little bit longer, Jack_, he thought, scanning the building's unlovely exterior. _Then I'll be home, I promise._

His eyes came to rest on the rusty fire escape, clinging to the side of the building like a feeble, dying vine. A strong wind might blow it completely off, that's how unreliable it looked. But it passed directly by the fourth floor window that Alex needed to reach, and as there appeared to be no way to reach the window from the inside, he was just going to have to take his chances with the fire escape.

Alex grimly recalled the last time a sequence of "clues" had told him to climb something; a floor had fallen out from underneath him and he'd had to punch out a glass window and crawl down two storeys on a rotten rose trellis. What a load of fun _that_ had been. Still, it'd be a shame to turn away after having come this far. Yassen must have surely anticipated Alex's inability to give up this close to the end.

As he pulled the fire escape's squeaky metal ladder down to the ground, Alex wondered just how much Yassen Gregorovich really knew about him. He tried not to wonder for too long.

Surprisingly, the fire escape wasn't half as rickety as it looked. A few of the stairs were broken, twisted, or had come loose, but there were no surprises or gut-lurching waves of vertigo during his ascent. In fact, it was a rather easy climb. Maybe a little _too_ easy, Alex considered, but that was probably just the spy in him being overly suspicious.

_No_, Alex thought firmly. _There is no spy in me. I'm just a kid. I've got nothing in me but myself, and I am not a spy . . . no matter what MI6 tells me._

He came to the fourth floor window and paused, peering through the dingy glass. There was a wide room beyond, dark and dim. A pile of furniture or boxes sat in the middle of the floor, but he couldn't tell from here. He'd have to go inside and look.

The window opened with a few sharp jerks and Alex managed to wrestle it up just far enough for him to slip inside. The room smelled like old wood and grease, and the air was almost chilly. Alex waited for his eyes to adjust to the light before taking a step further. He'd learned his lesson at the house on Embrin Street, and now watched for the telltale gleam of tripwires. There were none to be found here.

Carefully Alex made his way toward the center of the room. The furniture he'd seen from the window was actually a low table with a large, cumbersome-looking television set on top of it. From the looks of it, there was power supplied to it. Alex spotted a bright orange electrical cord running along the wall and disappearing under the door that led out into the hall. The television's plug was fitted into the socket at the end at the end of the power cord. Something else was plugged in, too, and as Alex squatted in front of the TV, he saw an equally retro-looking VCR sitting under the table. There was a videotape jutting out of its flap. A videotape with a handwritten label.

_**RIDER**_

Yassen's handwriting.

Alex turned on the television and was greeted by a black screen with the words "VIDEO 1" in the upper right corner. Steadily beginning to feel more and more uneasy, Alex hit the power button on the VCR. He put his fingers on the videotape and hesitated.

Did he really want to see what was on this tape? What if it showed something horrible? What if it unearthed a dangerous secret? What did it have to do with Alex, and why did Yassen lead him all the way out here just to show it to him?

Alex took a breath and pushed the tape into the VCR. He listened to the whine as the reels clicked together and the tape automatically began to play. He took a seat on the floor, his eyes fixed to the screen, his heart thudding as a million questions poured through his mind. And then, after a brief flash of static, a picture appeared.

A high angle. Deep shadows, harsh light. A small concrete room, maybe a bunker. Half a dozen people in black standing around a man seated on a metal folding chair. A timestamp was running at the bottom of the screen. It looked like a security camera feed. 29/03/01 22:52:03 So that would mean this footage was taken on the twenty-ninth of March of this year.

Alex felt his insides go cold. March twenty-ninth. That was two days after Ian Rider was killed by—

"—_have loyalty to MI6?_" The audio blared from the television, startling Alex enough to make him jump. "_You're dead to them, Rider. And unless you tell us exactly what you've told them, you're going to be dead to the world._"

Time stood still as Alex stared at the grainy image of Ian Rider, beaten and bloodied and bound by his wrists, raising his head to his faceless interrogators. He was barefoot, his pants torn at the knees, and it looked as if his right arm had been shot; blood had soaked through the sleeve of the white shirt he wore, darkening it to a deep wet red.

Alex leaned toward the screen, his mouth falling open in shock. His uncle was alive! But that was impossible. The funeral, the coffin, MI6 had said—

"_I've already told you_," Ian growled, but his voice sounded weak and hoarse, "_MI6 don't know anything. I never reported back to them._"

"_He's lying_," said another interrogator. His accent was foreign.

"_So are you!_"

A heavyset man standing beside Ian immediately reacted, punching him hard in the stomach with his meaty, enormous fist. Alex started and felt like he was going to be sick. Who were these people? Why were they torturing Ian like this?

Onscreen, Ian hunched over and hissed, making no move to raise his head. He was wrenched upright when the man grabbed his hair—fair, like Alex's, but matted with blood—and held his head back.

The lead interrogator crouched down so that he was eye-level with Ian's battered face. "_The difference between you and us, Rider,_" he said, "_is that lying isn't a part of our job—it's in our blood. We are born, raised, and bred to lie. That's why we're so good at it. And that's how we know when others are lying to us—we can sense it, we feel it, we know it. Your brother was good, but he wasn't good enough. I don't think I need to remind you what happened to him, do I?_"

Brother? Alex's heart began to hammer in his chest. They were talking about his father. These people—whoever they were—had done something to his father.

Oh, God. Could these people be responsible for the deaths of his parents?

There came a sharp noise from the TV and the interrogator drew back, wiping his face. Ian had spit blood all over it.

"_Finish it_," Alex heard the man snarl. "_He's worthless to us_."

A machete was passed to the heavyset man.

Alex clamped his hand over his mouth as tears flooded his eyes. Oh, God, no, no, this couldn't be happening, Ian was alive, he was alive, he—

"_Care to make a final statement, Rider?_"

The machete was raised above Ian's head. Onscreen, Ian closed his eyes and said nothing.

And then came a sight that would visit Alex in dreams for the rest of his life, accompanied by a sound that he would never forget. A sound like a butcher chopping through a side of beef, a thick and fleshy _thuck_.

It was quick. One moment Ian Rider was alive, whole, and in one piece. The next his head was rolling across the floor and blood was flowing down his chest in a thick red sheet. His headless body slumped in the chair.

Alex turned away and doubled over, touching his forehead to the dirty floor. He clenched his teeth, wrapped his arms around himself, and tried to keep it inside. But he just couldn't.

He let out a sob, gagged, and threw up.

Ian was alive. He'd been alive. And then they'd killed him. No, they had _executed_ him. As if he were nobody. As if he weren't somebody's uncle, somebody's loved one.

A thousand hugs, kisses, laughs, and smiles rushed through Alex's mind, each one more precious than the last. Happy birthdays, Christmases, traveling abroad, school plays . . . the broken promises, the missed appointments, the long business trips. Ian had tried so hard to give Alex a happy, normal life. Intentions aside, he'd done his best. If only Alex had known that this was how it was going to end. If only he'd _known_ . . .

All of the pent-up emotion he'd been staunching since the funeral now broke free, and Alex cried himself out to an empty room, soaking the floor with his tears. He didn't know how long he stayed like that, bent over, rocking himself backward and forward, sobbing and choking and wondering how, why, who.

When Alex finally pulled himself together and stood up, it was beginning to grow dim outside. Clouds were gathering in the sky. Rain was coming. He had to get home, he thought numbly. Jack was waiting, probably worried. He didn't want to worry her. She worried so much these days.

He turned to the television, which was nothing but a blizzard of static, and crouched down to hit the eject button on the VCR. He stuffed the tape into his pack, right between the two envelopes of photos that had led him to this awful place. Or rather, this place of awful truth.

Alex paused at the window, looking back through the shadowy room at the television's hulking silhouette. Now he knew why Yassen had led him here, why he had been training Alex to follow his trail, to recognize his handwriting, to keep going no matter what; it was to deliver a message, a message which negated everything MI6 had led Alex to believe about the Russian since the very beginning.

Yassen Gregorovich had _not_ killed Ian Rider.

* * *

**A/N:** For a more "complete" version of this chapter, please visit my homepage on my FFN profile. It will take you to my story archive, where _Lethal Arms_ appears in its unabridged form. Thanks!


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